For the last twenty years, the financial industry has been at the leading edge in bringing to practical realization new computer systems that manage and support sophisticated transactions and recordkeeping. This aggressive effort is not surprising. The financial industry includes banks, brokerage firms, and investment managers that consider as fundamental to the success of their business, the timely, accurate, and complete processing of transactions associated with the capital and assets of clients that are both institutional and individual in nature, and of the firms themselves. These transactions include the trading of numerous and diverse forms of financial instruments such as equities (company shares, both common and preferred), warrants, bonds, options, commodities, loans, repurchase agreements, and a full collection of complex fixed income (i.e., bonds) and sophisticated derivative products, denominated in multiple currencies. Due to the increasingly complex nature of these financial instruments, and as the result of mergers and acquisitions, multiple disparate systems are used. Each system is used for one, or a specific subset of, financial products, lines of business, legal entities, currencies, or locations. This specialization has also caused fragmentation, making it difficult for customers and firms to assess their total financial position in time to control risks and respond to opportunities, resulting in the occasional downfall of leading financial institutions, sometimes in spectacular fashion (see FIG. 1). It also makes it difficult to keep regulatory, legal, management, and compliance information consistent, and mandates the commitment of substantial resources for correcting the inconsistencies.